Political philosophy part one

OK, time for number one on my earlier political philosophy list, "How should politicians and office holders behave."

Well, of course, they should behave honorably, which Shakespeare made clear is not what we saw in Caesar's assassins, in spite of their talking about honor almost nonstop.

Honor would it seem excludes assassination.  Really?  Was Caesar a danger to the Roman state because he was "ambitious?" Well, yes he was, but his ambition was to stop the centuries-old power of an ingrained aristocracy called the Senate.  His plan was to extract its teeth, and that is the real reason they did him in.  The Roman constitution as it was had evolved via compromises for centuries, was way out of line with the fact of Empire, and would soon have fallen had Augustus not come along.  While there were things he did that make me wince, he at least set affairs in pretty good order.

So that is one thing a politician (henceforth this includes office holders) should never do and that is trust enemies, nor thrust themselves into public places.  There is no need for it nowadays, with TV and the Internet and so on.  Which should the politician be -- brave or stupid?  The handshaking and so on is just to get on TV anyway, and these things, while traditional, have no effect, except maybe on the person who gets their hand shaken, which can never add up to winning an election.  It is a waste of the politician's energy and hard on their hands (unless they give sloppy, weak, handshakes that are understandable but not impressive).  People important to a society are too important to put themselves at risk.

I think the honestly conducted press conference or just a policy statement delivered on TV (or whatever should become its equivalent in future).  By the way, a comment on journalist ethics, something that we often see ignored in the pursuit of fame -- questions at a press conference should be real questions, not traps or just statements of the opponent's position.  Otherwise the politician should be direct and put the journalist down in public with a response to the effect that you are looking for real questions.

A more important aspect of honorable behavior, though is lack of corruption, which goes way, way beyond accepting valuable bribes and favors.  It includes not exchanging political favors, not voting pork.  One of the most corrupt persons I can think of was a long term Senator from West Virginia who seemed to live for this.  I don't mention his name out of respect for the dead.

As things go today, then, it is obvious the U.S, is beset with corruption, and the consequences can be seen with bridges that go nowhere, military forts that aren't needed, and all kinds of wasted money.  I will deal with ways to construct institutions to manage these things later, but at least you would think the politician would have the honor and decency to not boast about these things and how they "bring home the bacon."

Alongside honor that the Romans were so hypocritical about, there is another thing we can call dignity.  Humor is desirable, but needs careful vetting.  Details like posture and grooming and speaking and so on are important in leadership.  More important though is the use of insults and other propaganda techniques to get elected (like patriotic music in the political commercial, or a flag, or testimonials, or patriotic symbols, or much ado about family and heritage, or anything else inclined to appeal to emotion rather than reason.  You would think the politician is selling soft drinks loaded with sugar.  The opponent needs to be criticized for what bad things they have done, and mistakes they have made, and it needs to be the truth (the whole truth), but the person of the opponent should be out of bounds.

This is of course the biggest problem with democracy -- people are influenced by this behavior.  We wouldn't see negative political advertisements if they didn't work, even though people profess to not like them.  Even if people don't believe the ad, it plants doubts.  No wonder election turnout is the States is so low.

I need to get a dig in here about lawyers.  As my blog probably makes pretty clear, I have a bad opinion of them as a class, as being the only profession for smart people to enter that has no particular reason to get into except money.  That they dominate the political class and as a result make laws where the interest of the political class remains well protected and it become almost impossible to do anything without hiring one tells me they should be banned from holding office.  They have already demonstrated their lack of honor and primary pecuniary interests, so they should not be allowed anywhere the laws they will be carrying out.  I'm sure there are a few honorable lawyers, and when one meeds one personally, they seem caring and interested, until one wants to compromise or one gets the bill and even worse if one contests it.

The sin of faith

Religion is often dumb, but people are not, even religious ones. 

I like to make a distinction between belief, which is things you accept on faith and it doesn't even occur to you to doubt and which you got via indoctrination, usually as a child -- and opinion, which is an intellectual view based on evidence and mindful consideration, which you doubt all the time (the more wild it is).

Religious people generally don't like to doubt -- they want the world and its answers handed to them, ad the religious memes encourage this by making faith a virtue and doubt a source of guilt and fear, when the reality is that doubt should be the virtue and faith should be disregarded entirely.

A side issue here is that faith in general, as is obvious in the news, does a great deal of harm. It is like people don't like Congress, but they like their particular Representative, so bad government goes on and on.

Besides, there are good things religions do, not that these good things wouldn't be done anyway, but I see no harm in cooperating with local religions when they are demonstrably doing good things.

I would define myself as skeptical, which leads to atheism, but there is no need for cynicism.

Assessing Obama

I have long thought it is pretty obvious there is no perfect candidate for office, and, being that they are politicians and generally were lawyers, this is not hard to understand. So why nit-pick every stumble and thing that goes wrong, and every lie they necessarily have to commit? It is better to ignore all that as noise and look at what the cliché calls the "big picture." As such Obama has done fine, especially when he has had to deal with Republicans in congress who have to respond to idiots like the Tea Party or lose closed primary elections. The economy is OK, as is the stock market. Inflation is nil and so are interest rates (which do hurt fixed income people but encourage investment and help the young starters-out. The country is essentially at peace, if such a think in the modern world is possible, with only a couple of inherited contests being wound down, although in some cases I think they will never end, I see no particular way to end them so it's hare to judge Obama for not doing so.

A beginning to political theory

What falls under the scope of "political philosophy"?

1.  How polilticians and officeholders should behave.

2.  What is the fairest way to select officeholders?

3.  What method of selecting officeholders is most likely to produce the best?

4.  Who should get the franchise, or whether there even should be a franchise?

5.  Are hereditary positions better or worse, under what conditions?

6.  How does a system prevent its being taken over by brutal leaders and turned into a dictatorship?

7  What forms of corruption (not just bribes but also political dealing and "bacon" voting can be allowed and how does a system prevent it?

8.  What constitutes a special insterest and how can their influence be controlled or eliminated?

9.  What to do about political parties and other forms of political alliance?

10.  Do people actually have certain "inalianable" rights and if so what are they and how does one spell out exceptions when these are needed?

11.  Is freedom a desirable thing in itself or just a useful theory or should it be igored?

12.  Much the same with justice or fairness in how governments function.

13.  Is democracy a good thing or a mistake or something in between?

I'm sure I've missed a few issues, but these are the ones I think important and I intend to address them in subsequent blogs from time to time.

Hate can be good

Hate is a perfectly natural emotion. When you experience it you may give yourself a little lecture to the effect that hate hurts only the hater -- the standard Buddhist reaction.

I don't buy it, even though everyone around me now is Buddhist. I think there are things properly worth hating, and that the emotion has good as well as bad effects, as with all emotions.

I'm glad you don't believe in the Devil. People who really do must live unfortunate lives, but when I said "the Devil" I used it as a symbol for people like Hitler or Napoleon or Attila or Stalin or Pol Pot or any of several really brutal autocrats in power today. These are all worthy of hate, and I don't think the hate has any bad effects on me, but indeed allows me to deal with the anguish their acts generate in me.

Religious emotion

Most religions, not just Christians, and, for that matter, a lot of non-religious ideologies, depend on strong emotions to maintain their meme in a person. These include hate, of course, as it unifies and blocks thinking, but also fear (of divine displeasure or of the loneliness of not having a community), guilt (of thinking "wrong" things -- we all have a natural desire to do what is right) and, believe it or not, love (look at the adoration of Mary and how Christians are supposed to love Jesus up there on the Cross sacrificing his life (temporarily) "for our sins"(although I have never been able to figure out just how that works).

Jesus and sex

Thinking about it a little bit, I can see where Christians have a sexual problem with Jesus. They can't have him having sex with fourteen year old girls, like Mohamed, he just wasn't that sort of guy -- he didn't live off brigandage and kill anyone in his way.

Still, they have to admit (as it is part of the Trinity) that he was man -- he became human -- otherwise the sacrifice magic to lift the curse doesn't work. So he had a penis and one has to assume he was sexual (otherwise he wasn't fully a man).

Nowadays a guy who knows few women and hangs around with a bunch of other guys, and even goes so far as to refer to one of them as "beloved" is just assumed to be gay, but of course Christians have to deny that (why, exactly?-- well I guess just part of the prejudices of the time). So he was non-sexual -- celibate -- and priests and nuns follow that lead, although he never made any utterance commanding it.

Did he fantasize, or masturbate, or maybe even have secret sex with local prostitutes, which would explain his tolerance in spite of the spirit of the times. Of course he was tolerant in general. Too bad about the subsequent history of his movement.

Making plagiarism a crime

It occurs to me that I don't know why religion and the press get special protection. A good Bill of Rights would guarantee freedom of opinion and the right to express yourself, and would spell out that this doesn't permit malicious slander, disturbance of the peace, spread of hate, revealing state secrets that are properly state secrets, invasion of privacy except when there is an overriding public need, copyright infringement so long as the copyright holder makes the material available to the public at reasonable cost, and plagiarism (except when appropriate credit is provided).

Religious ministers and press reporters should get no special rights or access.

Bigotry

I don't understand bigotry. I figure it is an inherited genetic trait and the bigot has no choice but be a bigot. Education doesn't seem to help; they just rationalize and go to web sites produced by other bigots for reinforcement.

Skepticism about God

Skepticism (non-belief without evidence) of anything important is the default.  It is the burden of those who assert God to prove there is one.  Otherwise non-belief is the only rational way to go.

I don't think there is a God because of the massive amount of suffering in the world, and because assertions about him lead to self-referential contradictions (if you don't know what I''m talking about here then your belief is indeed shallow and based on sand).

However, as I said, is someone asserts something important, they have the burden of proof.  "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."

By the way, I would not demand proof of God, just good evidence and an explanation of the problems with his existence I mentioned above.

Evil atheists

That Stalin and Mao and Pol Pot were Communists we know, and therefore they were atheists. I'm sorry if it is so that not all atheists are moral saints.

It is true that they were also politicians, and did allow a certain amount of religious freedom (in fact a good deal more than Western propaganda likes to say) but this was all for pragmatic reasons. They were and repeatedly said they were atheists.

I am an atheist too -- in the "hard" sense that not only do I not believe in any gods, but that I am as convinced as it is possible to be that there is none. Okay? Do I lose my credentials just because I tell the truth about atheism? Were the whole world atheist, the world would be no better than it is. There would be other frauds and superstitions and so on. In fact we see more and more of this as religion fades out in countries like the States.

Moral or ethical standards (goodness versus evil) are not related in any way I can see to belief about God. Just as it is stupid for theists to claim that their belief makes them more moral, it is also stupid for atheists to say that their non-belief does.

Why Mars is small

Yes the Martian atmosphere was stripped by the solar wind, which was a consequence of the planet not being large enough to keep its interior from cooling off, which caused it to not have a magnetic field, which allowed the solar wind to hit the planet directly. I'm sure you know all this: I just clarify for general benefit.

The theory seems to be that Jupiter and Saturn did a little dance early on, preventing Mars from reaching proper size and preventing the formation of a planet where the asteroids are. Bode's Law is largely thought now to be just coincidence, but I suspect the scientists have jumped the gun a bit, since the idea that the planets would space themselves, all else being equal (which in most cases it probably is not) makes sense.

The universe's purpose

 I don't think the universe has a purpose. It just is as a result of natural processes; we just are for the same reason.

I look at all the "wasted" space in the universe -- not just the vast distances in space, but the immense void that is the typical atom, and another that is the typical nucleus (if the nucleus were the size of the solar system, the "particles" in it would be no bigger than a few asteroids, if even that (they may be dimensionless points). Why does the universe waste all that space? It doesn't need a "reason" for what it does, it just does what it does.

If we need purpose in our lives, we have to provide it. This I think we can do without going too deep (go too deep and you defeat yourself).

Supreme Court nomination and confirmation process

There was a time when the President nominated and the Senate restricted its review to the nominee's qualifications and judicial experience.  Now it is how they will vote on issues.  Of course a nominee cannot answer such a question, but they still try to find out.  America is going downhill into a political morass.

I think provided the nominee is qualified and excellent, the nomination should go through without a political storm.  I suspect the American people may punish a Senate and a party that is seen to do otherwise.  I would hope they would.

A possible reason "they" may not be out there

I think the most common event to happen to life is for it to be wiped out within a few million years of its beginning. We have the moon stabilizing our orbit, we have our magnetic field. protecting our atmosphere (which is probably why any life on Mars met its doom). we have been lucky to not have volcanic episodes like the one that resurfaced Venus a quarter billion years ago, and have been lucky that colliding objects have been not quite big enough to sterilize the earth (although a few have been almost there).

There also seem to be several specific events in evolution where the probabilities are extremely small. Now that it happened is plain, so we know it is possible, but I think that is all we can safely say. Actually I rather like the idea of our being essentially alone -- it will make for a safer universe and one we can do what we want with.

Some political philosophy

I've seen at first hand how one party systems work, and they aren't too bad and are getting better (cleaning up the nepotism and corruption that they started out with). In these systems nowadays pretty much anyone who is willing to put in the time and who graduates college or does military duty successfully (and of course has a clean nose) can become a member of the party. The members are in a hierarchy, each selecting from among themselves who is to represent them higher up, and so on. They periodically purge certain types, mostly the corrupt. It seems to work and avoids the ugliness of campaigns and parades of idiotic voters.

On the other hand, there is an obvious potential for dictatorship. The system needs, I think, balances on police and other enforcement agencies that it doesn't now have. I personally experienced this.

So now I'm living under a long-term dictator, of a most benign sort, in a liberal society where there is very considerable tolerance, and economic progress every bit as good as in China or Vietnam -- Cambodia -- without censorship and prudery (except children) and a more easy going economy (you can actually use American dollars). So I conclude that so long as the dictator is popular and rational and not brutal, it can be a better government too. I do hope he has made arrangements for a peaceful transition when he passes. It is also a monarchy, and the king does have some influence -- not legally, but ethically -- he can speak out against things he doesn't like -- the British monarch wouldn't dare.

The biggest problem with the American electorate, besides their stupidity, is their venality. They don't vote for the person best for the country, they vote their pocket book, and see nothing immoral about that. The politicians even encourage it, by bragging how much "pork" they can get for their district (or how they will get them special tax breaks). This is utterly corrupt -- worse in my mind than the cop demanding a bribe.

Monarchs who stay out of politics and keep a dignity and stature the people can be proud of can have great influence and help the country a lot. They can also be the focus for resolving a constitutional crisis, which otherwise can lead to violence. The States have the Supreme Court for that purpose, but they are slow to act and have become politicized since Bork.

All told, it depends on the quality of the person. Hence systems where choices are made by people who already have long connections with each other seems to me the best route.

Elections are a farce and legitimacy an illusion

Something is needed to give the government an illusion of legitimacy, since we no longer think the first-born son is the only legitimate ruler. It is an illusion. Your vote can be and far more often than people imagine is stolen. I have seen close elections and inevitably they end up with the guy from the party that controls the election bureaucracy winning. I remember in particular a whole ballot box of Democratic votes in a close Gubernatorial election in Seattle showing up where the local judge force them to be included even though it meant more people had voted than had been listed as voting.

Now of course this is only possible in close elections, but they can be extremely significant -- look how Bush won in Florida and thereby got the Presidency, or how Kennedy won in Illinois with the same result.

The biggest problem though is the electorate itself. They vote based on impressions they get from a debate, with little if any knowledge of the candidate's voting record, and no sense at all of what the person is like. At least in things like Congressional leadership contests, the candidates are personally known to the voters, and so more sensible people usually win.

I can't think of how many times one or another candidate has won an election simply because he or she came out with a particularly effective campaign add. Why do you think so much of political advertising is so negative -- when everyone says they don't like them? It's because if you can tarnish your opponent with something, even though untrue or not the whole story, you win. 

I repeat -- elections are a farce and the ensuing legitimacy an illusion. If I could think of something better I would be all for it. As it is, the process needs radical reformation.